The Birth ofCivilization11SCIENTISTS ESTIMATE THAT THE EARTHMAY BE ASmany as 6 billion years oldand that the first humanlike creatures ap-peared in Africa perhaps 3 to 5 millionyears ago. Some 1 to 2 million years ago,erect and tool-using early humans spreadover much of Africa, Europe, and Asia(see Map 1–1 on page 4). Our ownspecies, Homo sapiens, probably emergedsome 200,000 years ago, and the earliestremains of fully modern humans date toabout 100,000 years ago.The earliest humans lived by hunting,fishing, and collecting wild plants. Onlysome 10,000 years ago did they learn tocultivate plants, herd animals, and makeairtight pottery for storage. These discov-eries transformed them from gatherers toproducers and allowed them to grow innumber and to lead a settled life. Begin-ning about 5,000 years ago a far moreA carved or etched limestone statue, from about 2500 B.C.E., believed by scholars to be aking or a priest from Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus valley in present-day Pakistan.■Early Humans and Their Culture■Early Civilizations in the Middle East to about1000 B.C.E.■Ancient Near Eastern Empires■Early Indian Civilization■Early Chinese Civilization■The Rise of Civilization in the AmericasCRAIMC01_001-039hr.qxp 8/12/10 3:57 PM Page 1

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Then, from about 7000 B.C.E., innovations began. Hu-mans learned to till the soil, domesticate animals, andmake pots for the storage of food. A few millennia later,bronze was discovered, and the so-called river valley civi-lizations formed along the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, theIndus, and the Yellow rivers. Cities arose. Writing was in-vented. Societies divided into classes or castes: Mostmembers engaged in farming, a few traded, and others as-sumed military, priestly, or governmental roles. As these civ-ilizations expanded, they became richer, more populous, andmore powerful.The last millennium B.C.E. witnessed two major develop-ments. One was the emergence, between roughly 600–300B.C.E., of the religious and philosophical revolutions that wouldindelibly mark their respective civilizations: monotheistic Ju-daism from which would later develop the world religions ofChristianity and Islam; Hinduism and Buddhism in southernAsia; the philosophies of Greece and China. The second de-velopment was the rise of the Iron Age empires—the Roman,The way of life of prehistoric cave dwellersdiffered immensely from that of today’scivilized world. Yet the few millennia inwhich we have been civilized are but a tinyfraction of the long span of human exis-tence. Especially during the recent millen-nia, changes in our culture/way of life havefar outpaced changes in our bodies. We retain the emotionalmakeup and motor reflexes of prehistoric men and womenwhile living highly organized and often sedentary lives.

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